"Yet, I would not shrink from duty;
Nor my vow leave unfulfilled!
—Still, still, had my mother known thee,
Would she thus have sternly willed?
"Wherefore did my angel-mother
Thus enforce her dying prayer?
—Yet what right had I to seek thee,
Thou, thy uncle's wealthy heir!
"Thus my spirit cried within me;
And that inward strife began,
That wild warfare of the feelings
Which lays waste the life of man.
"In such turmoil of the spirit,
Feeble is our human strength;
Life seems stripped of all its glory:
—Yet was duty lord at length.
"So at least I deemed. But meeting
Toward the pleasant end of May
With thy uncle, here he brought me,
I who long had kept away.
"He was willful, thy good uncle;
I was such a stranger grown;
I must go to hear the reading
Of a ballad of his own.
"Willing to be won, I yielded.
Canst thou not that eve recall,
When the lilacs were in blossom,
And the sunshine lay o'er all?
"On the bench beneath the lilacs,
Sate we; and thy uncle read
That sweet, simple, wondrous ballad,
Which my own heart's woe portrayed.
"'Twas a simple tale of nature—
Of a lowly youth who gave
All his heart to one above him,
Loved, and filled an early grave.
"But the fine tact of the poet
Laid the wounded spirit bare,
Breathed forth all the silent anguish
Of the breaking heart's despair.